VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ----- NGUYỄN THỊ THU HẰNG M. MINOR THESIS Adapting Speaking Activities in "Tieng Anh 10" - A Way to Reduce Students' Difficulties in Learning Oral Skills – A Case of Nong Cong II High School, Thanh Hoa (Thiết chỉnh một số hoạt động nói trong sách “Tiếng Anh 10” - cách để giảm bớt những khó khăn của học sinh trong việc học kỹ năng nói - một trường hợp ở trường THPT Nông Cống II, Thanh Hoá) Field: English teaching methodology Code: 601410 Cohort: MA 18 – Thanh Hoa Hanoi, 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ----- NGUYỄN THỊ THU HẰNG M. MINOR THESIS Adapting Speaking Activities in "Tieng Anh 10" - A Way to Reduce Students' Difficulties in Learning Oral Skills – A Case of Nong Cong II High School, Thanh Hoa (Thiết chỉnh một số hoạt động nói trong sách “Tiếng Anh 10” - cách để giảm bớt những khó khăn của học sinh trong việc học kỹ năng nói - một trường hợp ở trường THPT Nông Cống II, Thanh Hoá) Field: English teaching methodology Code: 601410 Cohort: MA 18 – Thanh Hoa Supervisor : Dr. Tô Thị Thu Hương Hanoi, 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii ABSTRACT Teachers of English have faced many obstacles in developing students’ macro language skill, and the desire of how to improve the effectiveness of English speaking lessons is really a strong motivation for this study.
The study aims at investigating the necessity of adapting English speaking activities, finding how to adapt them and then suggesting some appropriate speaking activities for ‘Tieng Anh 10’ to help the 10th form students at Nong Cong II school have more changes to practice speaking and improve their speaking ability. The subjects involved in the study are 125 10th form students and 7 teachers who are currently teaching or have taught speaking to 10th form students. The data collected from questionnaires, interviews, notes from classroom observation and then feedbacks from both teachers and students reveal that it is vitally necessary to adapt English speaking activities to facilitate English speaking process and enable students to speak naturally and frequently. The investigation also helps the author identify some categories of English speaking activities which attract much of students’ attention and heighten their participation.
On this basis, the study suggests some adapted speaking activities for teachers to utilize to increase the effectiveness of English speaking lessons when applied to the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ to teach the 10th form students at Nong Cong 2 high school. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .ii List of figures, tables and charts. vi PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Aims of the study.
Scope of the study. 2 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW I. Categories of materials adaptation. The purpose of materials adaptation.
Factors causing difficulties in learning oral skills. Socio-cultural factors. English speaking skills.The nature of language skills. The importance of teaching English speaking.
English speaking and speaking activities.1 Characteristics of a successful English speaking activity. Categories of English speaking activities. Problems with English speaking and speaking activities. Problems with English speaking.
13 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Problems with English speaking activities. 14 CHAPTER II – AN OVERVIEW OF THE MATERIALS AND CURRENT SITUATIONS OF TEACHING ENGLISH SPEAKING AT NONG CONG 2 HIGH SCHOOL, THANH HOA. Brief introduction of Nong Cong 2 high school.
Students and their English background knowledge. General description of the curriculum and the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’. Approaches of the textbook. The curriculum and the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’.
Sections for speaking skills in the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’. 19 CHAPTER III - THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. The subjects of the study. Data collection instruments.
Follow –up classroom observation. 22 CHAPTER IV – DATA ANALYSIS. The effectiveness of communicative activities in the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’.Students’ perceptions of their difficulties in English speaking lessons.Necessity of changing or adding English speaking activities. Teachers’ adaptation of English speaking activities and students’ preference……………………………….
Changing or adding English speaking activities chosen by teachers and their reasons. 26 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi IV. Follow-up class observation. Feedback from students on the adaptation of English speaking activities and their effectiveness.
28 CHAPTER V - SUGGESTED ADAPTATIONS OF ENGLISH SPEAKING ACTIVITIES. Co-operative learning. 37 PART III: CONCLUSION. Summary of the study.
Limitations and suggestions for further research. Suggestions for further research. I LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS Figure 1. The four –macro language skills Table 1: Description of teachers’ work experience Table 2: Students’ background of English Table 3: Students’ perceptions of their difficulties in English speaking skills Table 4: The English speaking activities adapted by teachers and students’ preference.
Table 5: The English speaking activities for ‘Tieng Anh 10’ chosen by teachers. Table 6: Adapted English speaking activities’ effectiveness Chart 1. The effectiveness of communicative activities in the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10. The necessity of changing or adding English speaking activities.
Students’ attitudes towards the adapted English speaking activities and their effectiveness.HS Nong Cong 2 high school ELT English Language Teaching CLT Communicative Language Teaching LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 Part I: INTRODUCTION I. Rationale With the development of society and the need to integrate into the international economy, Vietnam Government has set strategic goals for its own, in which education is considered as one of the leading goals. As a result, many changes and amendments to educational policies have made. The new set of textbooks, for example, has been modified and applied officially in high schools nationwide.
And up to now, the new textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’ has been officially put in application for five years for 10th grade students. The pilot period may be long enough for administrators and teachers to draw out some suitable adaptations, especial speaking skill. However, we can not deny a fact that many Vietnamese students after seven years learning English at schools still feel confused when communicating with foreigners or they even could not say a simple utterance like an offer. Obviously, the ability to communicate in a foreign language clearly and effectively contributes to the success of the learner in school and success later in every phase of life.
At Nong Cong 2 High School (NC2.HS), like many high schools in Vietnam, English has been a compulsory subject in its curriculum for many years and the English speaking skill is one of five official parts in a unit. However, due to the demand of the high school graduation exam, which means little attention has been paid to the speaking skill. Sometimes, they feel bored with the difficult and uninteresting topics in the textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’. With 6 year – experience in NC2.HS, the author finds that the English lessons with speaking activities adapted or designed by teachers always motivate students and get them involved in speaking effectively.
Moreover, improving speaking skill for 10th form students proves essential because most students have not learned how to speak English when they were at lower secondary school and their speaking ability is extremely poor. All the above mentioned reasons lead to the choice of the study ‘Adapting speaking activities in ‘Tieng Anh 10’ - a way to reduce students' difficulties in learning oral skills - a case of Nong Cong 2 High School, Thanh Hoa’. Aims of the study The aims of the study are: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 - to investigate students’ difficulties in learning English oral skills and the current situation of teaching the speaking activities to the 10th form students by teachers at Nong Cong 2 High School. - to adapt some speaking activities based on “Tieng Anh 10” to reduce 10th grade student’s difficulties in learning English oral skills at Nong Cong 2 high school.
Scope of the study This thesis is carried with no hope that can cover all kinds of English speaking activities because this is a board aspect investigated by many authors. The author’s attempt is only to adapt some difficult speaking activities in “Tieng Anh 10” to reduce student’s difficulties and make them more interested and active in English lessons, thus, improving their speaking ability. What are students’ difficulties in learning the current English speaking activities in ‘Tieng Anh 10’? 2. Which speaking lessons (in 16 units of Tieng Anh 10) are difficult for the students at NC2HS? 3.
What speaking activities in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”should be adapted to reduce students’ difficulties? V. Research methodology To achieve the aims mentioned above, the study employed survey questionnaire for students, interview for teachers and classroom observations to collect information on the students’ difficulties and seeks a way to reduce those difficulties by adapting some unsuitable textbook pre-designed English speaking activities in “Tieng Anh 10”. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW I. Definition In reality, a textbook can never totally be an effective tool for teachers to follow without any material adaptation because of its intrinsic deficiencies such as linguistic inaccuracies, out-of-datedness, lack of authenticity or lack of variety.
Material adaptation is to compensate for those deficiencies. Masuhara (2004) points out that materials adaptation involve changing existing materials in some forms so that they become suitable for specific purposes, learners, teachers or situations’. Similarly, from Tomlinson’s point of view (1998: xi), materials adaptation means to ‘make changes to materials in order to improve them or to make them more suitable for a particular type of learners. Adaptation can include reducing, adding, omitting, modifying and supplement’.
Another author, Ellis, M (1986: 47) considered adaptation the process of “retaining, rejecting, re-ordering and modification”. According to Madsen and Bowen (1978: ix), adaptation is the action of employing “one or more of a number of techniques: supplementing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying, modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content”. Materials adaptation means matching materials with the learner’s needs, the teacher’s demands and administration’s purpose. To adapt materials we have to consider four major factors: I.
Categories of materials adaptation I. Material adaptation as addition Material adaptation does not always require a great deal of extra work of teachers. As stated by Madsen and Bowen (1978) and Mc Donough and Shaw (1993), the most natural form of adaptation is extemporization, that is, a spontaneous response on the part of the teacher to a problem or an opportunity. This might take such forms as the substitution in a course book example of the familiar for the unfamiliar; the paraphrase of a course book instruction that is unclear or reference to previously taught items when teaching new items.
Another form of material adaptation as addition is exploitation which is “the creative use of what is already there (e. text, visual, activity) to serve a purpose which is additional to that foreseen by the textbook writer”. For example, a text accompanied by a photograph LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 may intend to develop comprehension skills and linguistic resources but a teacher might use it for some additional purposes. The picture might be used to predict the content or brainstorm related vocabulary; the topic and language of the text might provide the basis for discussion of students’ own experiences.
Extension, the third form of addition, refers to the provision by the teachers of additional materials in order to improve understanding or learning such as further examples of a rule or further items in an exercise. However, we must make a distinction between extension and supplementation. Extension means “more of the same”.